To Russia with Love

By Marc Keyser, TheResistance.Blog

The Russian military launched a covert cyber-assault on our 2016 US presidential election that helped Trump win. Now the Russians are actively influencing online discussions of issues and stirring up fights about issues such as the vaccine debate.

I was a medic in the Army Reserves, and we vaccinated hundreds of new recruits. I don’t recall any parents showing up to complain about Private Jonny getting vaccinated to prevent our troops being decimated by contagious diseases on the battlefield. An unvaccinated civilian population in the US is far more vulnerable to a bioterror attack, and no country has more biological weapons than Russia.

America is having a heated debate on whether to vaccinate school children for common diseases; but this is our debate, this is our problem. This is America, and we’re family. We don’t need Russian Crime Boss Vladimir Putin directing his military computer commandos to hack into our power grid and manipulate social media to help Trump win the election and exploit divisions among us to undermine our political system.

But perhaps the greater threat is if the Russians wanted to set us up for a biological warfare attack, then they could do no better than support the anti-Vax movement with their bots and trolls on social media.

We must understand that the Russian cyber-attack on our Presidential election and their continued interference on social media in our political process is an act of war.

A recent research project was intended to study how social media and survey data can be used to better understand people’s decision-making process around vaccines, but it ended up unmasking some unexpected key players in the vaccination debate: Vladimir Putin’s Russian trolls.

The study, published in the American Journal of Public Health, suggests that what appeared to be Twitter accounts run by automated bots and Russian trolls masqueraded as legitimate users engaging in online vaccine debates. The bots and trolls disseminated both pro- and anti-vaccine messages between 2014 and 2017.

We need to return good for evil and send a message to Russia with love.

How can Americans ever repay Putin for hijacking our social media to divide the nation and for giving us President Trump, our traitor in chief in the White House?

One way to repay Putin is to call and shut down Putin’s bank VTB here in New York, while resisters in London and Frankfort, Germany join in calling VTB branches there.

The Resistance could kick VTB bank out of America, the UK and Germany and give Putin a run on the bank that spreads to the other banks inside Mother Russia.

Why call and disrupt business at VTB bank?

VTB is Putin’s private bank, which is involved in all manner of corruption and criminal activities.

Felix Sater, a Russian-born businessman and associate of President Donald Trump, confirmed that the Trump Organization was pursuing a deal with a sanctioned Russian bank VTB owned in large part by Putin at the height of the 2016 election. While candidate Trump publicly denied have dealings with Russia or having loans that would put Putin in a position to blackmail him. Lies and more lies from Mr. Trump.

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For Russians living inside of Russia, protesting against Putin is difficult and dangerous.

But there is another way for the Resistance outside of Russia to protest in solidarity with Resisters inside of Russia that is simple, safe and can be economically devastating to Putin’s regime.

In the US, the UK, and Germany, call VTB bank to jam their phones, and organize small demonstrations in front of offices of VTB for a start to make the news and help the Phone Protest go viral. Just hold up signs: “Get your crooked, red commie Russian bank out of America.”

Resisters call the bank continuously and network on social media to spread the word internationally. Jam their phones with calls of concern, disrupt their business with our prayers, call and boycott the businesses doing business with VTB… until depositors panic and start a run on the bank that spreads to the banks in Mother Russia.

How susceptible is Russia to a run on the banks?

If you were a young iPhone-carrying client of RocketBank, a Russian start-up that offers app-based banking, you would have gotten some mixed messages on Thursday, Jan. 28. At 1:10 p.m., you would have received a letter written in RocketBank’s trademark pally style, only worrisome, and accompanied by a “shruggie” emoji:

“Hi [client’s first name], our longtime partner Commercial Bank Intercommerz is having cash-flow issues. Technically, that doesn’t necessarily mean that you would have problems with RocketBank cards serviced by Intercommerz, but times being anxious as they are, we would like to warn you as soon as we can and help you take precautions.” The letter went on to instruct clients to withdraw or transfer any funds they had on Intercommerz-serviced RocketBank-issued debit-card accounts.

You would have been well-advised to follow the instructions posthaste. Within an hour and a half, Intercommerz stopped servicing RocketBank cards. Money could not be withdrawn or transferred, and no purchases could be made.

At 3:50 p.m., RocketBank sent out a second letter to its customers:

“Hi [client’s first name], earlier today we did something hasty, without really checking all the facts, by sending out a letter recommending that clients withdraw funds from RocketBank cards issued by Intercommerz Bank. This was an unjustified action on the part of our marketing department, and we apologize, first of all, to our esteemed partner Intercommerz Bank, as well as to you, our dear clients. We ask you not to give in to panic that could harm the bank.”

But Intercommerz-issued RocketBank cards did not start working again after this letter.

The next day, RocketBank posted a long explanation on its website. It recounted the chronology of the contradictory letters and said that Intercommerz Bank had demanded that RocketBank retract the information in its first letter if it wanted Intercommerz to renew services to its clients. After the retraction — the second letter — went out, Intercommerz upped the price of renewing services, demanding that RocketBank arrange for the retraction to be published in the media. Then, said the RocketBank post, even after RocketBank complied with this condition to the best of its ability, Intercommerz did not unblock its cards.

By the time this explanation was published, the Russian Central Bank had appointed a temporary administration at Intercommerz, essentially beginning a bankruptcy process.

Banks have been going belly-up in Russia with alarming regularity and, generally speaking, little publicity. The RocketBank incident provides a rare glimpse not only into the routine business of bankruptcy but also into the peculiarity of communication in contemporary Russia. Most of the time, information is perceived and treated solely as an instrument of manipulation. Truth is what the stronger party says it is. Nothing shapes a message better than blackmail.

That Russia is a land of lies and propaganda is hardly news, and so the RocketBank incident is telling in another way. The Russian economic crisis, although undeniably severe — the ruble is worth against the U.S. dollar today less than half of what it was worth two years ago — has proceeded in a calm, almost plodding way.

Contrary to what some hopeful critics of the Putin regime once predicted, Russians have not taken to the streets in response to plummeting living standards. Never mind protests: There has been nary a bank run.

If the Resistance launched a Phone Protest against VTB bank that starts in the US, the UK, and Germany, it will spread to banks in Russia, and that could change the dynamics of protest inside Russia dramatically and catastrophically for Putin’s regime.

A Phone Protest against VTB that begins outside of Russia where protesters can conveniently call the bank branches and are free to spread the word on social media around the globe would quickly spread across Russia as VTB began to fail and there was a run on the bank.

The Resistance in countries outside of Russia could jam the phones start the run on VTB and use the bad financial news to crack the already weak consumer confidence in Russian banks like an egg and give Putin a messy run on the banks inside Mother Russia.

Nothing is more “news worthy” than demonstrations out in front of Putin’s corrupt VTB bank in New York, London and Frankfort along with an exponentially expanding international Phone Protest that jams their phones and disrupts their business until it starts a run on the bank and VTB goes belly up like a dead guppy floating upside down in a small fowl smelling fish bowl.

No news travels faster than bad financial news. News about a run on Russian banks is the most un-controllable, un-fakeable, and the fastest transmitted information on earth.

When millions of people in Russia get the bad financial news, and they see demonstrators in front of the banks yelling “We want our money back,” (in Russian), they will call their bank and the calls will jam the phones because everyone is calling and jamming the lines to see if the phones are jammed with calls at their bank. Millions of Russians with their money in banks will join the run on the banks spreading like a contagion in the streets because everyone else wants their money back.

A run on the banks is personal to the Russian people who are prone to panic when it comes to the safety of their money in the banks in Russia, because they know the banks in Russia are not sound, and they know they could lose their money in the banks… if they’re not first in line to get their money out of the banks when the banks begin to fail; but when everyone wants they money out of the banks at the same time, the cash is simply not there and there is no room in the sprawling cities of Russia in rush hour traffic for a run on the banks that probably don’t have more than 1%-2% of the cash on hand in cash.

Activists in Russia will have a unique opportunity to feed the panic and turn the run on the Banks into a massive nationwide referendum against Putin’s regime.

Put controls the state-run media, but no matter what Putin’s state-run media tells the Russian people, the imminent threat of a run on the banks and the collapse of the economy will trigger mass panic in the cities of Russia because people know the banks in Russia are not sound and their money is not that safe, the state-run media is fake news and all lies. In fact, the more the government tells the public to “Remain calm. Your money is safe,” (in Russian) the more the people in Russia will panic and want their money out of the banks to be safe… even though the rubles are not there when everyone wants their money in cash at the same time. Putin’s state-run media will not stop the run on the banks just the opposite. The talking heads in the media will pour fuel on the fire and spread the conflagration trying to stop it.

In the run on Russian banks with the threat of an economic meltdown looming, the Russian people may find they can no longer afford Putin and his corrupt government.

Vladimir Putin launched a cyber-attack on our elections and helped elect President Trump, The Resistance really should return the favor with an International Phone Protest against VTB and give Putin a run on the banks in Mother Russia. Let’s show Putin the power of Christian love for our enemy.

To Russia with love

To vaccinate or not to vaccinate? That is the question. We can debate it here in America without Russian meddling. But we need to understand that if the Russians wanted to set us up for a biological warfare attack, then they could do no better than support the anti-Vax movement.

This is America, this is our home, and we must join together in the fight to protect this nation against the threat from our most dangerous foreign and domestic enemies… Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump.